CDProjekt has released a 1.1 patch for the game that fixes certain bugs, improves performance, contains the "Troll Trouble" DLC that people have been having trouble downloading and (here's the kicker) removes the DRM from any and all versions that came with it. What's more, they have announced another patch, apparently for next week.

It was pretty funny seeing the ragefests going on at various forums (except the official one because there still isn't one yet) when it got delayed and then they briefly put it up before taking it down again.

By the way, for owners of the GOG version, you need to get the patch from the GOG site. It's available via the game card on your account page. Also (somewhat annoyingly) the patch will wipe your config settings, so you'll have to redo them.

Does anybody else experience any sign of lag while playing "The Witcher 2?"

I have constant frame-rate lag while in the prologue, and I've done everything to try and fix it, (aka, I installed the beta drivers, turned off 3D Vision, lowered "all" settings to low) and even then the frame-rate is still sloppy in some areas of the game (especially with the dragon sequence).

Hrmm thought the 9500 GS was a mobile-only GPU. Anyway, the point still stands - it's old and gutless. You need something with a bit more omph for current-gen gaming. You should be able to pick up a 4xx series card pretty cheap now. There might be someone that has a 2xx series card (or something of a similar vintage) laying around that they can donate to your cause.

I've actually been pretty happy with my PC's performance. I have yet to experience any stutter whatsoever, and the only place I've seen the streaming result in any texture pop-in at all was the inn in Flotsam (happened very rarely, once or twice in the 15 or so times I went through the inn). I didn't look at average frame rates, but I honestly don't care about the exact numbers as long as it is high enough that nothing seems 'off'.

I run TWitcher 2 at 1920x1200, with everything on highest settings/enabled except the following:
Texture Memory Size (set on Large)
Shadow Quality (Medium, still looks nice, can't see much difference between it and High)
# of Shadowed lights (High)
Depth of Field Gameplay (Disabled. Turned it on for a bit, and not bad performance, but I didn't like how it looked)
Motion Blur (Disabled. Not sure how it might affect performance, but I don't like how it looks.)
Cinematic Depth of Field (Disabled.)
Dangling Objects Limit (Disabled. I think this is actually a higher setting than enabled.)
UberSampling (Disabled.)
Vertical Sync (Disabled, cause I don't get tearing.)

SPECS:
Processor: Intel® Core™2 Duo CPU E8400 @ 3GHz
Graphic Card: 2-card SLI GTX 260 (216) (Both are XFX Black Editions, which actually perform better than 280s in a number of games, so don't necessarily look at this as representative of what you'd get with another 2x260 SLI rig)
RAM: 4 GB
Operating System: Microsoft® Windows Vista™ Home Premium (64 bit)
Mobo: Can't remember off the top of my head, can't be bothered to look.

Since my build is no longer an especially expensive or new one, I've been a bit mystified by all the people with performance problems.

TWitcher 2 is the first game that I haven't been able to play on the very highest settings at 1900x1200 in the 3 years since I built this PC. So I probably have a few more years before games that I can't play on any settings come out, and it's upgrade time.

I think a lot of the problems people have had have boiled down to driver issues (especially for ATI cards) and the performance hit of the DRM on non-GOG versions. The latter should be resolved at least with the 1.1 patch.

Well, I have an ATI card and have had no issues whatsoever with the game. Before the patch it worked smoothly on settings slightly above the high preset and after the patch it works just as smoothly, but on ultra settings (with ubersampling disabled).

Be aware that it essentially just downloads a whole new version of the game instead of actually patching it, so it's at least 10-11GB for the English version (14GB or more if you have multiple languages installed).